


of nights easily forgotten

by Mamihlapinatapai



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-28
Updated: 2011-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamihlapinatapai/pseuds/Mamihlapinatapai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can't remember the exact moment he fell in love with Quinn Fabray. But he has an entire stack of pictures hidden under a floorboard in his room of the summer that he did./ The summer before high school, and the changes it brought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of nights easily forgotten

He can't remember the exact moment he fell in love with Quinn Fabray. (Despite popular opinion he does.

Love her, that is.)

But he has an entire stack of pictures hidden under a floorboard in his room of the summer that he did.

It's before she got pregnant, before she became Finn's and only Finn's, before she had a reputation to uphold. They're fourteen and he spends a summer alone with her. Finn's with his mom, on a family-bonding vacation and he expected it to be awkward without him. (It's not.)

Somewhere between slushies at 7-eleven in heat that can only hit the mid-west; nights filled with watching her catch fireflies to put in a jar on his back porch while the sun sets, he realizes that she's beautiful. Stunning, actually, in a white sundress her mom forced her to wear. (Later he'll think how ironic it is that the first time he considers sleeping with her she's wearing a purity ring.)

He learns a lot about her that summer.

In June, he learns her favorite color, yellow, and that she despises grape _anything_. That she's terrified of spiders, and wants a dog but her mom says that it will ruin the house.

By July, he can tell you that she can't wait to leave this town. That if she could go anywhere in the world, it would be a beach, just so she could feel the sand beneath her toes. He could tell you that she's hesitant to go on to high school, because everything will be so _different_. How she fears growing up to be her parents, as much as she fears being unliked.

In August, he knows that she feels like her house is made of glass. How no one steps too hard or raises their voice's too loud, so that the perfect image the Fabray family portrays to the world won't shatter. How she knows that eventually her life will only be fragments too sharp and too small to pick up and put back together again.

(He also knows that sometimes, she questions if there really is a God, but she's crying by then so he doesn't like mentioning it.)

Two days before Finn returns, he climbs into her window at three in the morning, and tells her he has a surprise. He helps her jump down and it's the first time he sneaks her out of her house, doesn't know it won't be the last. They walk to his house, winding around to the porch in the back.

"Close your eyes," he whispers and grabs her hand so she doesn't trip up the stairs.

"Shoes, please." She steps out of them without question, and he slightly amazed at how much they've changed that summer.

He picks her up quickly, his hands under her arms and she gasps slightly before giggling.

"Noah, what the-" that's as far as she gets before he sets her down and she blows out a hard breath before squeezing the sand between her toes. Her eyes are still closed and she tilts her head up, leaning against his chest, before letting out a half awed-laugh.

He suddenly wishes Finn wasn't coming home.

( _Thank-you, Noah._ )

When Finn comes home, he walks down the streets of Lima and finds his best friend and the girl he thinks he might like-like sitting on Puck's back porch.

When he asks why there's sand in a kiddie pool on the side of the deck, they both look at each other and laugh before Puck hands him a Coke and asks him how his trip was.

(Finn explains how he inadvertently fell off the balcony of the hotel they were staying at, and Quinn wonders if he knows her favorite color.)


End file.
